General Motors ignition-switch death toll reaches triple digits

General Motors ignition-switch death toll reaches triple digits100 Motorists Have Been Killed By Defect, Per Latest FiguresPete Bigelow

During Congressional hearings on the General Motors ignition-switch crisis last summer, Rep. Diana DeGette shocked observers when she said, "We're hearing there may be up to 100 deaths linked to this."

At the time, GM insisted there were only 13 deaths attributed to the safety defect. Such a claim seemed preposterous. It turns out DeGette, a Colorado Democrat, was prescient.

General Motors acknowledged Monday the death toll from car accidents caused by the defective switches has reached at least 100 people, according to the company's weekly update. That's an increase of three from last week's victims' compensation report. There are still more cases to review, so the death toll will probably increase.

"This grim milestone revives the issues that our House investigation revealed," DeGette told Autoblog on Monday. "GM and all automakers must be fully transparent with safety regulators and promptly share key information, and NHTSA must efficiently analyze crash data to detect problems before so many lives are affected. As we have seen with the problems with GM's ignition switches, these failures can compound and bring tragic consequences for far too many innocent people."

At least 184 people have been injured in accidents caused by the ignition-switch flaw, 12 of which have physical injuries such as quadriplegia, double amputation or permanent brain damage.

Overall, 626 death and injury claims remain under review from fund administrator Ken Feinberg and his staff. Thirty-seven of those are related to fatalities.

Rather than post new stories every time the death count is increased, we'll update this post with the latest information. Watch this space for more updates as we have them.


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